On the 12th of November, 1567, a king's ordinance interdicted the conferring of judiciary offices on non-Catholics.

In vain did Conde and Coligny cry out loudly against these violations of the peace of Amboise; in vain, on the 16th of August, 1563, at the moment of proclaiming the king's majority, was an edict issued giving full and entire confirmation to the edict of the 19th of March preceding, with the addition of prescriptions favorable to the royal authority, as well as, at the same time, to the maintenance of the public peace; scarcely any portion of these prescriptions was observed; the credit of Chancellor de l'Hospital was clearly very much on the decline; and, whilst the legal government was thus falling to pieces or languishing away, Gaspard de Tavannes, a proved soldier and royalist, who, however, was not yet marshal of France, was beginning to organize, under the name of Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit, a secret society intended to renew the civil war "if it happened that occasion should offer for repressing and chastising them of the religion called Reformed." It was the League in its cradle.

At the same time, the king had orders given for a speedy levy of six thousand Swiss, and an army-corps was being formed on the frontiers of Champagne.

The queen-mother neglected no pains, no caresses, to hide from Conde the true moving cause at the bottom of all these measures; and as "he was," says the historian Davila, "by nature very ready to receive all sorts of impressions," he easily suffered himself to be lulled to sleep.

One day, however, in June, 1567, he thought it about time to claim the fulfilment of a promise that had been made him at the time of the peace of Amboise of a post which would give him the rank and authority of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as his late brother, the King of Navarre, had been; and he asked for the sword of constable which Montmorency, in consequence of his great age, seemed disposed to resign to the king.